In 2015, Charlie Sheen opened up about his HIV diagnosis on the Today show. In doing so, the actor caught his ex-wife Denise Richards off guard. Then in April 2025, on an episode of Whine Down with Jana Kramer, Denise revealed that she was “kind of upset” when Charlie told the general public that he was living with HIV. While she could understand why Charlie decided to open up about his diagnosis, it bothered her that he didn’t fill her in first.
She had not yet talked to their daughters about their dad’s diagnosis, and she didn’t want them to find out from other children at school. “I think I picked them up early from school that day because I didn’t want kids at school to tell them,” Denise said on the podcast.
“I wish he gave me a heads up, like, ‘Hey, I’m doing it today.’ You know? Because it was everywhere,” she explained. After pulling her daughters, Sami and Lola out of school, she “had to have a conversation” with them about their father’s HIV status. Admittedly, “it was kind of hard to explain to them what it was,” Denise said.
“There’s been a few things that I’ve had to have conversations with,” she continued. “But for the most part, I really try to shelter them from a lot of stuff.”
When Charlie opened up about his HIV diagnosis in 2015, he revealed that he had been diagnosed four years earlier. “I’m here to admit that I am in fact HIV-positive,” he said at the time. “And I have to put a stop to this onslaught, this barrage of attacks and of sub-truths and very harmful stories that I am threatening the health of others, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
Denise and Charlie were married from 2002 to 2006. They welcomed Sami in 2004, then welcomed Lola in 2005. On Denise Richards & Her Wild Things, the reality series that follows Denise and her family, Sami admitted that she and her dad “haven’t really spoken much in the past five months.”
On the April 1, 2025, episode, Denise, Lola, and Charlie had lunch together, but Sami didn’t join them. “I would rather do literally anything else than go to lunch with my father,” she said on the show.
